An Experimental Investigation of A Non-Mixing Type Corona-Needle Charger for Submicron Aerosol Particles

Abstract

In this study, the non-mixing type corona-needle charger for submicron aerosol particles was designed and experimentally investigated. The current-to-voltage characteristics, charger response and particle losses of the charger were experimentally studied and discussed at different corona voltage of about 0–5 kV and particle diameter of about 10–1000 nm and aerosol flow rate of about 1.5 L/min. It was shown that the highest ion number concentration in the discharge zone of the charger was found to be about 3.48 × 1014 ions/m3 for a corona voltage of about 5 kV. The charger response was found to increase when the particle diameter decreased for particle smaller than 80 nm. For particle larger than 80 nm, the charger response was found to slightly increase with the particle diameter. The highest diffusion loss was seen to occur at particle diameter of 10 nm to be about 49.74 %. For the electrostatic loss, the highest particle loss was observed to occur at particles diameter of about 10 nm to be about 52.87 % for the corona voltages of 3.2 kV. From the findings, this non-mixing type charger proved to be particularly useful as an aerosol charger before the detector in an electrical aerosol detector.